Colorado grizzlies, Bigfoot share a history of sightings and alleged San Juans habitat

Denver Public Library Western History Collection] “The Grizzly’s Last Stand” in Denver’s City Park is show in the 1930s. The bronze statue of a grizzly bear and two cubs was sculpted by Louis Paul Jonas in 1930 and donated by J. A. McGuire to honor the vanishing beast.

In Colorado the grizzly and Bigfoot have a lot in common. Both are prehistoric, and for both their possible presence today is more a product of investigation and theory than verifiable reality. They share a common history, a common possible range in Colorasdo and modern history that blends fact and legend.

There have been a lot of alleged Bigfoot sightings, there are no documented finds, at least not by anyone I would actually believe. On the other hand, no grizzly has been documented in Colorado since Sept. 23, 1979, when a 16-year-old sow attacked bow-hunting guide Ed Wiseman south of Pagosa Springs near the headwaters of the Navajo River. Wiseman stabbed the bear to death with an arrow as it tore into him. The bear was more than 350 pounds. Its hide and skeleton were donated to the Denver Museum of Nature and Science. She reportedly had cubs.

“Even though both big cubs got away clean, Colorado wildlife officials inexplicably chose that moment to declare the grizzly extinct statewide . . . even as they quietly hired a researcher to comb the San Juans for evidence of more survivors,” David Peterson wrote in “Ghost Grizzlies: Does the Great Bear Still Haunt Colorado?” “Across the next 28 years, many credible grizzly sightings were reported, in both the San Juans and the adjacent South San Juans. Yet the official word remained: gone.”

The disco-era bear was a surprise, even 33 years ago. Before that, the last grizzly was killed in 1952, another female whose cubs are said to have escaped, feeding the theory of a lost, elusive colony.

“The decline of grizzly bears started in earnest about 1850, at the time of first contact with significant numbers of spreading European settlers. The widespread extirpation of grizzly bears was rapid. Grizzly bears disappeared from about 95% of their former range in the contiguous United States by 1920 – within a mere 70 years,” according to the U.S. Geological Survey’s Colorado Plateau Research Station. “By 1970, grizzly bears remained in only about 2% of their former range, at about only 1% of their former numbers. The cause of this catastrophic decline is no mystery. Grizzly bears were extirpated because humans – primarily European settlers – killed them. However, extirpations were less rapid where grizzly bears lived in the mountains, and especially where they used foods that kept them at high elevations, out of harm’s way.”

Yet, much as in the 1950s, nothing definitive came from a flurry of searches in the aftermath of the 1979 find or again in the early ’90s, after an alleged grizzly sighting in the San Juan Mountains. There was excitement again in 2006 when two hunters experienced with bears reported watching a female grizzly and two cubs in the San Isabel National Forest from about 80 yards away through binoculars. But again searches by government agencies and volunteers turned up no definitive proof, not even a stool sample (because one thing is inevitable about bears in the woods).

In 1992 unexplained hair and scat were found by bear researchers in the San Juans. Grizzlies there would be “more like Yeti or Sasquatch,” grizzly researcher Doug Peacock told The Denver Post in 1992. “These animals defy everything we know biologically.”

The Colorado Grizzly Coalition continues to search and holds out hope for an important most important reason, it states.

“As the Grizzly is officially considered extirpated from Colorado, any potential surviving bears are not receiving the study, legislation and, most importantly, the protection they deserve,” the organization states on its website. “The Colorado Grizzly Coalition aims to change that. If we can find solid evidence of this great and noble animal in Colorado, then State and Federal agencies will be obligated to act.”

The organization seeks donations, as well as volunteers who are true believers. I make no comparisons or judgments, but an equally small and dedicated group looks for Bigfoot in much the same area. Ya see, the San Juans aren’t just grizzly country.

The Colorado Bigfoot Research Group quotes researcher Keith Foster in a story about a bear killer named Willford, who hunted in the San Juan Mountains in the 1870s:

“Grizzly bears were common in the area in the late 1800’s and Mr. Willford killed 39 bears for the bounties put on their head at that time,” Poster reported. “Mr. Willford’s memoirs state that while hunting in certain drainages in the southern San Juan Mountains of Colorado that feelings of being watched and feelings of dread were common. Local Indians said that only the bravest of hunters would venture into some of the areas involved.”

You don’t have to believe in Bigfoot. I don’t. Until one struts, hops or does an old soft shoe in front of me on the San Juan Skyway, I remain a skeptic. But if a grizzly can survive a century barely noticed in Colorado’s wilderness, who is to say a smarter, less hungry creature couldn’t outwit us for a few dozen centuries.

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